HST110H | MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

Ultimate Avengers #1 (Marvel)

For my second comic I read Ultimate Avengers. I enjoyed this very much. I don’t know much about the Marvel universe other than what we learned in class but that seemed to be sufficient enough to understand what is going on. First off, like all of the recent Ultimate books, the world is recovering from the ultimatum. It starts off with Nick Fury talking with Hawkeye. Hawkeye tells Nick about Captain America going rogue because he found out about Red Skull. This is immediately followed by a flash back to the events that would explain Hawkeye’s cryptic remark. The flash back begins with Hawkeye hanging from a helicopter yelling for help. Captain America drives his motorcycle out of a window into the helicopter and quickly incapacitates the helicopter’s staff. With one enemy ‘copter remaining Captain America leaps in an effort to take out the staff in this one as easily as the last one when he is attacked by someone who immediately can be identified as Red Skull by his blood red skull face. Instead of easily tearing though the enemies like he had done before, Captain America is relentlessly pummeled and then, after he whispers something into the Captain’s ear, Red Skull throws Captain America out of the window. Hawkeyes saves Captain America from falling to his death and, full of confusion, asks Captain America how he lost so easily. Not to ruin the ending I won’t say how but I was surprised and excited, I wanted to run out and immediately get any of the other issues that had been released. Going into this comic I have to say that I underestimated Captain America. I wrote him off as a war propaganda icon and that was all. After seeing him leap out of a window on a motorcycle into a moving helicopter while screaming about how he can’t be killed by bombs, I somehow came to have a great deal more respect for him. I figured he was just some man dressed in red, white, and blue that, other than having America in his name, had no real substance. I was wrong, he is probably best described as a patriotic Batman. He uses weapons and his own physical prowess to defeat his enemies and is quite good at it. Furthermore he is as fallible as any of the other superheros, this is proved by him quiting the Avengers after finding out about Red Skull. This lead to me viewing the Captain as much deeper character than I had given him credit for. As far as the story is concerned, I’m amazed. It started out immediately with suspense and ended on exactly that note. I was begging for more at the end.

Cap has always been a decent representation of our country at any day and era. During WWII, he was at his most famous, Nixon had Cap abandon America’s icon to become Nomad and under Bush… well, the giggling killer killed Captain America.
You don’t need to know any of this in the “Ultimate Universe” stories because the stories in it’s nature are supposed to be for the first timer. The Millar / Hitch Ultimates 1 & 2 are fun and wonderfully illustrated. Those stories were pretty compressed and honestly a bit predictable because they were based on already established nearly 50 year continuity of Marvel history.
Like any good story, as a writer myself, I want to see something that I don’t expect or envision happening 4 pawns in on their chess game. This new Ultimate Avengers is really a fresh jewel on Marvel’s crown. Now we can only hope Ultimate Spider-man will rise above “Everybody including JJJameson now loves Spidey” into new ground.